


thinking of

by doublejoint



Category: One Piece
Genre: Established Relationship, Other, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27664120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: Tashigi dreams of menial tasks.
Relationships: Smoker/Tashigi/Trafalgar D. Water Law
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	thinking of

Tashigi wakes up with her hands empty, from a dream where she’d been writing, filling out endless reams of paperwork, reporting on things that she couldn’t be sure had actually happened but had to say anyway, that she would have refused to do in principle if it were all real (no proof, no good conscience) but that the dream version of her had taken in stride. It’s the third time this week she’s dreamed about work, and always the worst parts of it. She never has one of those dreams that brings her clarity in battle, or on how to make things more efficient; it’s always the repetitive tasks that need to be done but take too long.

She can barely remember the specifics by the afternoon, but it’s still sitting there in her mind like tea leaves left too long in hot water, already disintegrating but having far overstayed its welcome.

“You going to talk about it?” says Smoker. 

The ocean is calm beyond the deck, though there’s more than a nip of cold in the air and clouds out at the edge of the horizon. Tashigi draws her coat in closer; her breath comes out a cloud in the air.

“I keep dreaming about filing paperwork.”

“Yeah?”

Tashigi sighs. It’s difficult to explain; it sounds insignificant, stupid. She thumbs over the hilt of her sword, the texture familiar. Dreams are just dreams; people dream of doing worse than reporting unverified events to supervisors all the time, cold-blooded murder and betraying their loved ones and catastrophic failure. It shouldn’t bother her this much. 

Smoker pats her shoulder, smoke trailing warm up her neck and cheek, and she leans into it slightly.

* * *

Their men are growing restless; they’ve been at sea for too long, crammed on the boat with only each other for weeks. They’ve had a few brief meetings with other Marine ships, and a skirmish with some no-name pirates, but even capturing them hadn’t been an excuse to get to shore. Their next shore leave should be soon, but Tashigi’s lost track of it in the endless shuffle of things to do. On top of the usual workload, there’s the cold-weather ship maintenance and the pile of forms she’s going to need to mail when the finally do reach the shore. And though usually her subordinates fighting is a rare thing, but at the moment their tension and frustration is making it noticeably less so, and she’s been the one in the vicinity to break up most of the fights lately.

She expects, after calling an early lights-out, to find Smoker close to sleep himself, but he’s got his feet up on the table and the receiver of the dendenmushi in his hand. It’s dwarfed by his palm, though it barely fits in hers, and though Tashigi’s used to it she always notices.

“Anyway,” he says, as she closes the door behind her, and she can tell by the warmth in his voice, like lying under a heavy blanket with the sun coming in through a window, exactly who he’s speaking to, without even looking at the dendenmushi itself. “Tashigi says she’s been dreaming about paperwork.”

“Working too hard?” says Law on the other end.

“A usual amount,” Tashigi says. “You’re one to talk.”

(And he is; He’s the one who works himself too hard with classified secrets that Tashigi probably shouldn’t want to know, but that she senses doesn’t conflict with her own objectives too severely. She and Smoker have each other to push and pull and rearrange the workload; Law is prone to working without his crew at all.)

Law sighs, the receiver crackling. “When’s your next shore leave?”

“Next Wednesday,” says Smoker. “Can’t fucking come soon enough.”

That’s less than a week, closer than Tashigi had thought. She smooths Smoker’s hair over his forehead; he looks tired, worn like the peeling varnish on the table, and they should really get to bed--but she’d stay on the call another hour if it were to last that long.

* * *

Tashigi drops down from the crumbling concrete ledge onto the sand. The sky, a grey-white when they’d docked that morning for their first day of leave, has grown several shades darker, escalating the threat of snow. The docks are around a bend on the shoreline, and she wonders if she hasn’t gone too far--Smoker had called her on the dendenmushi twice, once when she’d been in the post office with her arms full of shipping supplies, once a few minutes later to ask her to meet him down at the beach, a bit of a way from the harbor. In the distance, to the west, there’s a shape; it could be a person, could be him. The sand is soft under her boots, but it’s too cold to take them off; she moves slower than she’d like to. As she grows closer, the figure looks more like two people, and she wonders again if she’d overshot the distance, but a few steps more and she sees, the taller one on the right is definitely Smoker, and the shorter one on the left--that’s Law’s hat, Law’s coat. 

She speeds up as much as she can, almost into a run, and then she half-turns her ankle on the sand and swears, digging her hands further into her coat pockets. They’re not close enough to hear without shouting, just close enough for her to make out their faces, close enough for a stream of smoke to meet her now. Another is wrapped in Law’s hair where it sticks out from under his hat, longer than usual, clearly not cut in the months since they’ve seen him last. Smoker’s arm is draped loosely around Law’s shoulder, and Law’s leaning into it more than slightly, and Smoker looks happier than usual for all that his cigars aren’t lit.

“I hope you didn’t have to go out of your way?” she says, once she’s close enough for them to hear.

Law shakes his head. “I’ve been in the area.”

“Maybe you stayed a little longer than you would have otherwise,” Smoker says.

“Maybe,” says Law, with a twist of a smile. 

She hugs him maybe a little too forcefully, her cheek pressed against the zipper on his coat hard enough that she’s sure it’s left an impression, but she can feel his heartbeat through his clothes and his warm breath on her forehead.

* * *

When the snow begins to fall, large flakes that melt into the sand immediately, the bell in the town rings two in the afternoon, half an hour before Smoker has to be back at the ship. Law pulls him into a kiss long enough that Tashigi wonders if it’ll make him late, and Tashigi’s stomach constricts. If they were only able to bring him back with them, if he could just stay indefinitely--a line of thought that always leads her to the same dead end, nowhere good or productive. But she can see the same thing in Smoker’s eyes when he opens them, his hands leaving outlines of smoke cupped around Law’s face. 

He can only leave it there for so long, when he’s so far, and the smoke fades into the fog of the snow before he’s completely out of sight. Tashigi leans into the crook of Law’s shoulders, trying her best to shield her glasses from the snowflakes. Law drops his hat onto her head, and--the brim is long enough to help. She rubs the water that’s already landed off the lenses, and there’s not much to see around them, another beach, like the thousands she’s seen--she’d like to see him clearly. 

“Sometimes I dream about filling out charts,” he says. “And IV machines that won’t stop beeping, and when I fix one another’s got a problem.”

Tashigi thinks about the hospitals and medbays she’s been fortunate enough to avoid for the most part, and then about Smoker after Punk Hazard, the shrill beep of the IV line that he’d had for just a few days but that had drilled itself into her ears, but not her dreams (so perhaps she’s lucky in that regard). 

Her fingers catch between his earrings on both ears; she tries not to tilt her head up too far and negate the hat’s effect. His hands encircle her wrists, his thumbs against the heels of her hands, steady, as she stands on her toes. The waves smack the shore, the ocean spray like the snow in reverse. The hilt of her sword brushes against the front of his coat. She wants to kiss him, but she wants to look at him too--but there’s time for both.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
